When you have a product that needs to be experienced, you need trust. So what do you do? Get those with credibility in your market to vouch for you. On this 166th episode of the E-Comm Show, Andrew Maff interviews Zack Nagle, CEO of TRUEFORM. One of the biggest challenges faced by TRUEFORM, de-motorized and curved treadmills, was how to build trust in their unique product.
In this episode, Zack shares how TRUEFORM overcame this challenge by leveraging the power of social proof. By partnering with trusted influencers and creators in their market, they were able to reach a wider audience and establish credibility for their product. If you're struggling to build trust in your niche product, this episode is a must-listen.
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Andrew Maff and Zack Nagle
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Zack Nagle
Zack Nagle is an entrepreneur and endurance athlete with a passion for redefining the fitness experience. As the CEO of Trueform, Zack leads the charge in delivering premium curved treadmills and fitness solutions that combine innovation with exceptional design.
00:03
We're trying to improve the running experience and your training experience, whether you're just trying to be healthy and just get 30 minutes of walking in every day. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. I'm your host, as usual. I am here with Zack Nagel, who is the CEO of true form. Zack, how you doing, buddy? Ready for a good show? I'm excited. Ready for an angel super excited to have you on the show. I like to claim that I'm a bit of a runner, so that always makes it fun to have you on here. But I'll probably also find out that that's not accurate. So I'm gonna let you take the floor. I always like doing this kind of stereotypical in the beginning. Let you kind of just tell us a little bit about your background, how you got started with true form, about true form, and then we'll take them there. Yeah, probably easiest way to start with true form. So true form has been around for a little more than 10 years now. I think it started around 2013 kind of took off around 2015 I myself came to the company middle of 2016 so been around pretty close to the beginning. True form got started. There was just a need and a an opening in the market. And the treadmill market, fitness world for a functional treadmill, curve, no non motorized treadmill. So a treadmill with no power to it. There's batteries in display and recognable battery in one of our models that gives you the metrics. But everything else is powered by you, the user. And it's funny to think that in 2013 that was a new invention to the market, when everything else was motorized and high technology and everything else in the world is going to more technological, advanced, you know, products out there. But in the fitness space, everything was moving back towards functional. This is when CrossFit started to take off a little bit more in the public eye. And different workouts like orange theory and up 45 and getting back to, you know, quote, unquote, origins of fitness, and then just getting back to the basics. And so Tommy started in 2013 I was not involved in a startup of it. Like I said, came it. Like I said, came in 2016 we actually had a gym on campus. We're based out of Connecticut, so the gym opens at the public and it also served as a studio to film content, educational content, information about the product, and then bring different individuals in in the fitness space to really showcase how versatile the treadmill is. We did that for a couple years, and then just moved on to closing the gym and bringing that fitness space digitally through different digital products, through like On Demand training, and then just online resources as well. And then just us being a very small, nimble company, at our peak, we've had about six people, I think, in day to day operations, shared much larger resources with a manufacturing company who handled a lot of the manufacturing logistics there, in terms of sales and marketing and all that, four or five people and everybody wore different hats. So you know, if you emailed us, if you emailed tech support, could have been made on person. But over the years, again, we stayed very nimble, and then small and lean, and now just kind of grown with company, and then took over a couple years ago, and trying to write the next chapters as we head into 2025 in a couple of weeks. Nice. So did you? You mentioned you started in 2016 but you took over. You said you took over a couple years ago. So what was your role when you started in 2016 it was just more of a trainer, lead, education, educational lead, and it's, you know, sales operative, like I said, we had a gym on campus so that we had true fun. Was a small town middle of nowhere, Chester Connecticut, which is valid by the shoreline and not near Hartford, or probably about an hour and a half hour and 45 outside of New York City. So a hugely populated area, the goal is never to have a full fledged gym where we'd have 102 100 members. It was more of just, we have all this fitness equipment. We have a treadmill. Let's, let's kind of open to the public. And I was working for a bit, but as we've grown as a company, and, you know, been to variety of events in the country, in the United States and as well worldwide. It was just a need to, you know, send myself, you know, out on the road in and do the traditional sales thing, and bring that education and bring that training along with, you know, with the treadmills, because there is an education need to a, you know, our treadmill started, you know, $3,000 so a $3,000 treadmill, no more. Or to it some individuals now it could be a little bit of shock up front, and then we start to talk through, oh, here are the benefits of and here's why. It starts to make sense. And so that's kind of where I went with the company. And then individuals over the years, you know, they dropped off, you know, went different directions, decided to go with different, you know, job opportunities, which is great and wonderful to see, but I've always had a passion for it. You know, I've been Nath and my whole life wasn't a runner, until just shortly, I started with true form as more of a hockey, baseball player, but then got into running just of a thing to do outside of playing competitive sports, and took it from there, and like said, just about seven years later, you know, here I am nice, so at a high level, tell me what is the difference, right? Like, I know it's curved, got that. No motor got that. But what are the pros for some from something functional like that, versus just using, like, your standard, like, kind of motorized treadmill, for sure. I mean, the biggest thing is engagement. You're engaged every step of the way, whether you're walking, running, sprinting. The treadmill is versatile in the fact where anybody can get on it and get what they want out of the treadmill in their workout, or just general use. You can if you know same thing you can do outdoors, if you want to go for a walk around your block or go for a five mile run, you can do in the true form. There's not much of a learning curve there. Certainly there's a weird experience the very first time you get on any curb treadmill, but certainly a true form where you're moving, your body's moving, your legs are moving, your muscles are engaged, but you're standing one spot, so there's a weird moment or two. You kind of get your legs going. It's almost like a Bambi experience. But after that, you realize it's just much more enjoyable experience for beyond a functional treadmill, like a curve treadmill, because you're engaged. Every step away, your glutes are involved, your hamstrings involved, your balance is involved. We're on a motorized treadmill. You could set it to speed, 345, whatever. And as long as you have your balance down, you know, you can keep moving, and you will keep moving. And then there's also a safety component as well, because you're in control every step of the way, when your legs stop, the treadmill stops pretty quickly, and so it's a little bit safer as well. And there's been some studies out there. We really leaned into the science and the benefits of the true form, where the whole difference between true form and their competitors is our shallow curve and our consistent foot landing place them whether you're walking or running. So it's you're not shifting too much forward or backwards or side to side on the treadmill, you're getting nice, consistent landing placement with your foot, and it's going to naturally load yourself, safely and healthy all the way up your body, where it's a little bit easier on the joints and hamstrings of users who find it a challenge to run outside whatever limiting factor they have, injuries or whatnot, but our True form sense is a lower impact environment. It's much easier, much more enjoyable. Yeah, yeah, I can. I can definitely see, from an injury perspective, how that would reduce kind of that, that impact side. What Tell me a little bit about the business is it primarily you're focused on your traditional consumers? Are you more B to B and focused on, like fitness centers? Originally, we started more B to C, more consumers we like. I said, We rose with the CrossFit market in 2015 CrossFit, what was around well before us and was doing well. But, you know, we brought running indoors through CrossFit, which was kind of unique in that functional fitness space where now, if you owned a CrossFit gym, more your CrossFit user who wants to train in their home gym, you can bring running indoors, whether it's intimate, weather is stopping you or space or time, or maybe not. A runner you don't like running again, going back to controls a little bit more enjoyable experience, you know. So we focus on that market because there was, there was such a need there and desire there, and it fit into our methodology, methodology, foot into theirs as well. And so we focus on the B to C, some CrossFit affiliate sales as well. But really saw individuals who were looking to bring, you know, the CrossFit experience their home gym. That's where we started off with. And then we started to look into other markets that could, you know, be very similar individuals looking to bring outdoors indoors. You know, we're actually trying to replace any outdoor running out in the sense of, we want you to do all of your runs on a true form and never go outside. That is complete opposite. We want to enhance what you're doing outside, like bring it indoors for whatever reason is needed for yourself. And so we found that with triathletes, individuals who are already spending 510, grand, 15 grand on bike setups for indoor training, they would have $1,000 cheap Walmart treadmill right next to it. And then we realized and tried to pitch to these guys, you could bring a pretty similar outdoor running experience, and Chris your training benefit indoors, just like you do with your specialty training bike in a treadmill sense. And so we went there, and then, now, like I said, we're a very small, nimble company, you know, we rely on other resources. So we rely on some dealer networks moved a little bit more to be that way, to help get our message out there, you know, because it is a, again, a unique product to curb treadmill, no power, no motor. To it, we try to leverage our partners who really have the buy in with their consumer to get the children out there. Yeah, are you doing any marketing directly to the B to B market? I've worked with one of the top 3d body scanning companies for years now, and getting into the market of fitness centers and getting them to like, because it's space, right? Like they only have so much room. So for them, it was complicated, because it was like a completely new machine. In your scenario, it's almost like getting them to switch out an existing machine. So what's that marketing approach like? How are you kind of tackling that? A lot of times it's as simple as a demo, and it's probably the biggest challenge we had, is is really vocalizing and showing the consumer, whether it's a business or a home gym user, personal user, that there is a difference of a true form in AA, even just a complete difference from your motorized treadmill experience to a current treadmill experience. So we'll put a treadmill in a gym for a few months and let the users in home gym users or commercial gym users test it out, see it, how their customers react and feel to it. Because, like I said that Bambi experience getting on at first, like, what is this? Yeah, and then you're like, oh, you know, crap. This is, this is kind of fun. This is enjoyable. You know, I enjoy being on the treadmill, you know, more so than just being on something really impressive line. And these commercial gyms, what they found to our biggest selling point to them is simply, there's less to no maintenance to it. It's cleaning the treadmill. No, like said, there's, there's batteries for display. One of our models has double A batteries. Another one has a rechargeable battery, lifting a battery. They swap out every six months. But, you know, for commercial gym setting, but there's no nothing really to break there. Pretty challenging to break our treadmills, unless there's a pretty big neglect there. So that's been our bigger sell point for these commercial gym gym settings, is you buy a once. It's the same price, if not half, the cost, of a motorized treadmill. Some of these high end, commercial grade motorized signals are 1020 grands. And, you know, we're more than half the cost, and you're getting the benefit of you're not gonna have to swap this out, because it's not gonna be a break on you. So it's yet. So that's been a huge selling point for us. How do you leverage those different like, partnerships? Do you build that, like, an ambassador program, or, like, do you use influencers like, what? What's the approach there to kind of take that proven methodology and use that social proof to obviously, keep throwing the business certainly last, you know, since, you know, pandemic, when we couldn't really go out there as much and go to events like, would you get the traditional CrossFit circuit or trade show circuit in the fitness industry to meet with these individuals? But last four or five years, been really lagging into the influencer and Creative Market, and just individuals who have say in their communities. And the influence and Creative Market is often just initially looked at as like, this person has X amount of followers and this amount of engagement, and we look at that as well, but we look at individuals who just again, have voice inside the community. There's some, what I would call influencers, who have next to no following on social media in terms of just like a number that would stick out at you, but they put their voice and the word out there, and people want to be a part of that. So we try to find those individuals who can really voice that there is a difference, and really get across the feeling of the true form to their users and to their members, particularly those who are doing things in the community now, not just visually online. And certainly there's a importance of from our perspective, to have a, you know, quote, unquote commercial on social media with some of these influencers and some people the following, but individuals who are doing things in the community with others and getting other people involved, that's a huge benefit. Because, you know, you touch a feel a touch and feel a true form. You get on a true form, you can see a difference pretty quickly even, you know, not just a motorized, non motorized, but between our competitors as well. So we, anytime I can put a true form on someone, they can touch and feel that's that's what we're looking for. Yeah, do you so obviously, okay, so I got it. So you influence your side, you leverage the partnerships. Kind of build them out as ambassadors. What about like from a personal branding side? It's always an interesting question, because I know a lot of brands that have a B to B element that tends to be something they lean in on. Is that something that you and your team are leveraging, or are you trying to kind of stay, stay away from basically that tactic. We've tried to kind of create a personal brand, and there is a true form brand out there. You know, we joked years ago, okay, we're gonna take true form here and get a true form coffee and then T shirts and apparel and all this stuff, and get into that side of branding and realize that one of the benefits of true form, you know, not that we are for everybody, but that the individuals who get involved in true form kind of take their own spin on it and bring it out into their communities in the world where we don't need to be. You know, the huge true form brand that everybody just wants to wear, the T shirts. 24/7, obviously, it's a great thing to have, but true forms kind of almost create its own little band aid market where people call our competitors treadmills by our name, or vice versa, in the sense I'm more than happy to partner with an individual. Or a group, and showcase their methodology and leverage allow them to leverage, you know, the true form name and brand and likeness in their community, almost as a part of their own than us calling out there is our true former brand to be like, you know, we're at the top, we're this person, we're that group, and just try to be something we're not, and it takes a lot of work off our plate as well, and it's a little bit more enjoyable to create that community experience with the different groups who pick up true form and bring into the world. Is that is that kind of approach of building that community the more lucrative side of your marketing? Or is there another element like, do you lean heavier on, like paid advertising or social or email or direct or anything like that. Like, which of those tends to be the top performer? Yeah, certainly the traditional social across all the platforms, Facebook, Instagram, are probably our biggest ones. Traditionally, Facebook, it just the value of our product and the net worth over the income level that the individuals who are buying our true forms, or target market tends to be on Facebook a little more than, say, like Tiktok. We try to leverage it a little bit. You know, Instagram and Tiktok and those kind of video platforms are now. Instagram's becoming a little more video based. We try to leverage our individuals in the community already have that built in, and try to get into the storytelling aspect of true form and the events that people create, and we do with them, with our product. But Facebook has done pretty well for us. You know, we've kind of taken a little bit of a backseat to social media and doing paid advertising this year, as you go through a little bit of a transition, we have a couple new products and new generations of our treadmill coming out right around the first year, so a couple weeks from now. So pretty excited about that. So start to ramp up a little bit more of our social presence. You know, this past year, we've really been leveraging what some of the other brands and some of our dealers have been doing with all the products, including the true form as part of their their network, to get our message out there. But, yeah, I mean, traditionally, it's a usual social media stuff. Our email marketing works well again, just getting the message out there where we are in the country, a lot of questions that come through our inbox and whatnot, is, hey, where can I try to form I'm bought in. I love where you guys are putting out there. But if I touch and see my field one, we don't have traditional storefronts, and understandably, we're gonna pay three, four or $5,000 or $5,000 for a trade mail you want to see it and use it first, and so we try to put out there. Hey, here's a road trip next month, two months here the events we're at, or here's one, someone in our network doing an event. And then so we leverage our email marketing system that way as well. It works out pretty well. Yeah, it's something we've looked at too in the past of doing like, kind of like, I want to call it a class pass element, but almost like, Okay, here's all the locations that have, you know, the system in it, and that you can go try it and you know, then you pay the gym, or whatever it is, per exactly how often it's getting used. Is it primarily? Do you have it set up where it's like primarily, just a straight transaction on the website, or is this more like lead generation, and there's kind of a longer sales cycle behind it? It's a little bit of next. We have two versions of the treadmill. We have the runner, which has been around since the beginning. That one's the high end commercial grade Made in USA. Originally made it connected. Now we make it in Milwaukee, right outside of, or right outside Milwaukee and Wisconsin, and we have another product called the trainer, which is a our value and engineer version of the run of remake factor in Korea. And the biggest difference between the two is is mainly just made in USA versus made overseas. The trainer is a little bit smaller footprint. Has the same curve because our patent curve is the big selling point. But because the materials are a little bit more light commercial grade in the trainer, that one is, you know, a little bit more cost effective to some users. So that one seems to be, you know, we have a Shopify website individuals, you know, buy and collect that one either through us or through our dealers. It's a relatively easy sale. Certainly, someone will call in or email in or get in contact, to us, with us one way or another, but it's pretty quickly. You know, one or two interactions. Maybe they call us right now it's the holiday season. They might have called us in July and they bought around this time of year, just because that's when they're buying stuff. But that one's pretty quick. The runner is tends to be more of the I almost equate to buying a luxury car. You see them three four times. It might be a year before they die. There's customization options to it. There's just different colors. You can put graphics on the treadmill with different surfaces. We have, like a artificial turf surface, a track surface. So really cool options there. So it's more of like, you know, the trainer we positioned this way in the market as well. Like the trainers, you can get 70% or almost 30% of what you can out of the runner and the trainer package for a little bit smaller price. And so individuals who are bought into buying or higher ticket, high end commercial grade runner, but maybe budget reasons, or for whatever reason, maybe like the smaller footprint one the trainer, they're already set on that, so they go with the training for the runner. Is okay. How could we customize this to your goals, whether it's facility, a college, university or even just a home gym, and you want it to fit in perfectly with your other products they place in the gym, so that one is more of a traditional sales approach, where they might come in through, you know, social media or emails or different events that we'll do, and we talk it through them with them, you know, several times before they make the purchase. That's very interesting. You obviously know this industry inside and out. What was the what was the business like when you kind of took it over, when you started taking, taking the reins of it? Did you have to kind of like, re look at how things were structured and everything? Yeah, I mean, it was just kind of like the Wild West, like I said, we got big with the crossro market, and that was great. We rode that way for a while. And then we, you know, a couple things happened. One, obviously, COVID happened. So our product that came overseas, you know, fortunately came from Korea. I'm not trying in terms of just shipping, logistic nightmares. We still had issues at the port for in terms of getting our product outside of our factory, made in Korea, that was, you know, luckily was, was fine there. And then the other side, cost materials have just skyrocketed. So we pride ourselves on being an American made company the best of the best material, steel, aluminum and whatnot. But costs have gone up. You know, we're not trying to be a, you know, the runner starts at just under six grand, the base model that, you know, if I could sell that paper three grand to be great. But just the cost materials have risen. So we looked at that and we saw ourselves. Were into that again. I'm just picking cross because we did so well with them early on, but that market is very grungy home gym. They certainly have the money to spend, but maybe they're signing on barbells and SWAT racks and other strength equipment. Cardio machines are a secondary nature. So we looked at that like we can't continue to run a business with just that, that market demographic. And so that's when they start to go into, let's move up market in terms of treadmills. So some of our competitors have come in to us after us. We were probably it's a big goal who you want to ask, but we're the first, if not one, a in terms of curb, non motorized treadmills coming to the public, and everyone who came after us, either one wanted to go out two directions. You know, we have someone like techno gym, who make beautiful treadmills, but they're made in Italy, and they're made like Ferraris, and they're 10 to $14,000 even the curve treadmills beautiful pieces, which is very expensive. And then you have some of our competitors, and we'll name, yeah, ultra value to the market, but down the opposite direction. How cheap can we get this to the consumer, just for them to check a box? And so we found ourselves at the top of the bottom of the market in terms of the pricing structure wise. And it was great from a value perspective, because we were one of the only ones who made a curved treadmill in the United States, completely United States. But we often found the biggest thing is we'd get a lot of people coming in say, How come you're not as cheap as X, Y and Z company? And it was kind of frustrating, because, like, our value proposition isn't the price, it's the benefits we get out of it and customer service. And so we started to move up market a little bit, where now we're cheaper. I would see how low bias here, but just as good of a quality and customization option as techno gem or not that price point. So we're towards the bottom of a pricing structure. And so that's what we try to look at. Is when I took over, is let's go up market a little bit, not so much, where we're not attainable to the demographic we were after before, the one where they're not just looking to check a box of a crook treadmill. You know, certainly there's things that I buy in the fitness world and not fitness world, and not fitness world where I'm just looking to check a box. There's nothing wrong with that, but there it is a hard sell for a curb nanomorris treadmill. No power to it, no frills. You know, has it displayed pace, distance, time, but really getting across of you know, we're trying to improve the running experience and your training experience, whether you're just trying to be healthy and just get 30 minutes of walking in every day. Or you're training for marathon, ultra marathon or crazy endurance event. You know, we want to be able to provide that experience and showcase, you know, the benefits of that to the consumer. Yeah, well, it sounds like it's working. It's clearly working. Zach, this was awesome. I really appreciate you being on the show with us. I don't want to take up too much more of your time. I'd love to take up too much more of your time. I'd love to get the opportunity to hear let everyone know where they can find out more about you, and, of
24:05
course, more about true form. Yeah, yeah. True formrunner.com is a website true form writer on all of our social media channels as well. Like I said, we're a small company, so if you can email or call us, you know, is a pretty good chance, I'll pick up or one of my team members will also any questions. Don't hesitate to reach out. You got Zack, zack@livetrueform.com for the best way to just go on our website and hit the chat box and we'll connect. Beautiful
24:27
Zach, thank you so much for being on the show. Everyone that tuned in, of course, thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual thing, rate, review, subscribe all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to theecommshow.com to check out all of our previous episodes. But as usual, thank you all for joining us, and we'll see you all next time. Have a good week.
24:44
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